How is Spotify looking to drive growth?

You can also listen to the article here:

Today Spotify announced product updates aiming to further differentiate in the saturated music streaming and growing podcast market.

1) International – 36 new languages and 85 markets (now total nearly 180)

2) Ad marketplace – Audience Network allowing to reach listeners on originals/exclusives, podcasts via Megaphone and Anchor. Podcast also coming to self-serve Ad Studio

3) HiFi – high-quality audio subscription competing with Tidal and Amazon Music HD

4) Paid podcast subscriptions – test to allow creators to publish paid podcasts via Anchor

5) WordPress partnership – to turn written audio content into podcasts via its podcast platform Anchor

6) Video – coming to more podcasts. Major miss for YouTube to alternate between background audio and video.

7) Interactive tools – with the ability for listeners to be part of the show incl Q&A, polls etc. Likely more to come in that area with the rise of Clubhouse.

8) Discovery Mode – self-serve tool for artists to run audience development campaigns.

9) Podcast discovery – better tools and recommendations

10) Lots of originals

Overall:
– 345M monthly users (+27% y/y)
– 155M subscribers (+24% y/y)
– 25% listen to podcasts
– 2.2m podcasts (3x from 2019)

Published

By Sander

Sander is passionate about media and technology, helping companies with strategy, product and growth. Currently consulting Red Bull Media House with strategy and growth as well as Moonbug, a $145M fund to create and distribute inspiring kids content, with business strategy. Previously futurist and led non-linear strategy at Disney after heading strategy and growth at Maker Studios internationally. Before that product manager ​at Verizon Media Group (AOL) and video distribution network Goviral. Early on he helped Europe's largest seed investment fund Seedcamp​ and organized hackathons in Africa with Garage48​.